2006 April 16

16
Apr

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying to find a decent, to-the-point definition of Web2.0. Now, the term is used so brutally fuzzy most of the time, and there are so many different definitions. How to explain, to a non-tech non-nerd crowd, what the deal is? It’s in a way both the pain and the charm of this whole 2-point-0 thing: It’s still developing and in flux; It’s narrative.

It’s more helpful, makes it more graspable to tell a story than to give a technical definition. Like Steven Johnson’s desert vs rainforestcomparison that tells us that information is for the web what sunlight is for a natural ecosystem: In the desert, or Web1.0, the energy provided by the sun goes mostly unused, wasted, it’s just a few people finding their websites mostly at random, but a many website’s wisdom goes to waste. Enter the 2.0 rainforest: Energy/Information is scrutinized and used and re-used in different forms by all kinds of plants, animals, scavengers, software programs and bloggers, thus creating a rich and diverse information ecosystem.

Doesn’t make for a good definition, but everybody gets the point: Waxonomy.

16
Apr

Depending on how you cut the film, I was mostly happy; I was mostly sad; I made good choices; I made bad choices. Regardless, I’ve got to clean the bathroom, and my neighbor is going to help me wash the last of the dishes.

FTrain is really quite a beautiful weblog, by Harper’s Paul Ford. (Also, who’s into that kinda stuff, check out the site structure. I found it quite captivating.)

Currently

Chair and co-founder of ThingsCon, a non-profit to advocate for a responsible IoT, global community of IoT practitioners, and event platform.